Grassroots action for a safer, more just world

Strategic Cooperation: our agenda for the new president and Congress

President Obama (it feels good to say that) came into office last week with a vast array of challenges facing him, the crumbling economic not least amongst them. Given the failures of the Bush administration and the encouraging things we heard from Obama on the campaign trail, we at Peace Action West feel like there is a window of opportunity to dramatically reorient US foreign policy, and we want to work to ensure that the new administration and Congress prioritize a new approach.

To assist in that endeavor, we have created Strategic Cooperation: Global Challenges, 21st Century Tools. Our policy agenda outlines nine of the key foreign policy challenges the Obama administration will face, and concrete steps they can take to improve US security and relations with the global community. The driving force behind the agenda is that the US has a number of tools available for dealing with foreign policy challenges and resolving conflict, and most of these were neglected by the Bush administration in favor of brute military force. The Obama administration and the new Congress have the opportunity to revitalize these tools and develop a security strategy that moves us from a Cold War-era mentality into the 21st century.

We already delivered copies of the agenda to congressional offices from around the western states while we were in DC earlier this month, and we will continue to promote these ideas and pressure Congress to put them into action.